NBC Sports is Digitizing Their Video Archive, Will Contain Up to 400,000 Hours of Content

NBC Sports Group is hoping to preserve its historic video archives before the library falls victim to the effects of time.

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[They have] hired a New Jersey company to digitize, catalog and store the group’s film and video library, representing up to 400,000 hours of sports-media content.

Darryl Jefferson, vice president of digital workflow at NBC Sports, said the division of Comcast Cable took advantage of its move from New York City to a new facility on Blachley Road in Stamford to hire Deluxe MediaRecall of Northvale, N.J., and tackle the project.

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Jefferson estimated that NBC’s sports library goes back 52 years, but much of it cannot be reviewed because the needed equipment could not be found.

“To lose this to deterioration would be a shame. This allows us to access the material instantly,” said Jefferson, adding that archival video is used to provide context to a telecast. A digital record makes the process less labor intensive and time consuming.

The article also says that Deluxe is capturing about 9,000 hours of video each month.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.